This project took time. Time away from the city, out in the field lands to the west. A small homestead. No one would miss them for weeks. If at all.
Muffled sobs blended with the creak of straining rope, with semi-conscious groans. The farmhouse in the distance looked deserted, as if no one made residence. Truth, for the past weeks, no one had. The wooden porch bore only one strange marker, a rusted iron pole, piercing through the oaken decking. Only the chill of the air prevented any foul stench, any clouds of flies, from what lay beneath.
In the darkness, thin strands of light shone between the cracks of the barn. Inside, a number of forms waited on three central figures. The man, skin weathered with age and hard toil, shackled spread eagle and nude upon a raised platform. One of the forms knelt there, between achingly spread knees, as he groaned his way up from the depths of the black pits of unknowing. Above him, a great weight hung a few feet above from a block and tackle assembly, with one line anchored into the rock and angling away through a series of pulleys.
Across the width of the barn, a young woman strained against her bonds, tears streaming down her pain-wracked face, the clink of chains echoing through the tense stillness. Manacles bound her ankles, further anchored to the flooring and below, into the very rock. Shackles held her wrists, held high by the other end of the wayward rope, the weight over the man pulling her youthful body achingly tight as it sat in mid-air. A collar encircled her neck, joined to the rope by a length of loose chain. Another form stood before her, soft hands busy in the dim lighting.
Between the two, and off to the side, forming a triangle, a deep pit, from whence the sobs echoed upward. The sobbing nude woman, also seamed by wrinkles and tanned by work outdoors, lay unharmed and shivering in the chill, anchored to the floor by yet another set of unyielding manacles. Above her, the counterweight, a great container filled with sand. A massive plug on the underside of the container stared downward, like a giant unblinking eye, pierced only by an iron ring hawsed with a rope, dangling some feet over the woman's head. On this rope, a key twinkled. Already, a slow trickle of sand escaped the plug, forming a small mound on the floor of the pit. Ringing the edge, the six remaining forms stood near motionlessly, conversing amongst themselves, occasionally calling softly down to the trapped woman.
"Give in."
"Surrender, and we will cease this."
"Resist, and they die as you listen."
"Their lives are in your hands."
"Their deaths, on your head."
"What is their worth to you, truly?"
Aside from the gathering, one form whispered into the straining young woman's ear, as hands played over supple skin and straining sinew, dipping low and cupping. Invading.
"So soft. So pliable. You yearn for release. Speak the words, swear to be ours, and you shall have it. Let them die. They would kill you if they could, to save themselves. Submit to us, be ours."
The form kneeling just outside the weight's circumference said nothing, trusting in movements to convey meaning. Moistened lips slid along a repetitive path of turgid flesh, coaxing and cajoling in silence.
Their intent was crystal clear. Whichever would submit first, would be spared to live at their whims. As their chattel. The other two, were to be discarded, like trash, their only purpose to serve as the breaking point for the one weakest.
The taunting continued. Each form kept up their own preferred methods, as they had become to think individually of each other as well as intermingling within the group.
Until, as one, they ceased. Heads turning collectively back to the city, all lost in thought. At length, they murmured.
"It calls."
"Power."
"It draws us."
"Beckons."
"Desire. Lust. Death."
"It yearns for us."
"Dangerous."
A moment's pause, before one form moved to crouch down at the rim of the pit, the others easing away to the door, all female, all of them nude save for this last, the leader.
"A pity. We are called away. Would that one of you had chosen. Now, such a waste. But know this, we will grant you some small mercy. Your deaths will be much swifter than originally planned."
A flare in the half-light, a hand surrounded by a nimbus of violent energy, a face illuminated in madness, before a crashing impact with the massive container, shattering a wide hole.
With a roar, the sand rushed freely into the pit. The woman's shrieks muffled in a very short time. Soon, only a pair of twitching hands could be seen. Deprived of the counterweighting, the rock above the man groaned downward, settling with a wet grinding against the floor, his life's blood and bits of his crushed flesh draining into the sand-filled pit, his legs spasming feebly in the throes of death. A last piercing shriek, and a sickening wet tearing, as the young girl's bonds overcame the resistance of her flesh, rending her asunder in a torrential splatter of viscous fluids and gobbets of gore. One last burst of elasticity, and the corpse's head swung upward, slapping wetly against the ceiling of the barn, trailing gore in its wake before slipping from out of the collar and rolling away, coming to rest near the center of the room. The slowly glazing eyes wept as they stared, blinking one last time. The blood-spurting remains of her body collapsed onto the floor, her arms swinging freely from their shackles. Slowly, the trickle joined what was her father, draining into the pit to mix with the sand smothering the woman.
For the eight women left standing, this smacked of failure. Even at this, the end, this family remained together to the last.
"Such a waste."
The seven women, all nearly identical, faded from view. The eighth, the leader, stood in the doorway, her eyes cast in the direction of the distant city, narrowing in speculation.
"We come."
